My research has been in two closely related areas: Project A "Factors Influencing the Outcomes of Psychotherapy" (long-term change), and Project B "Factors Influencing the Appearance of Neurotic and Psychosomatic Symptoms During Psychotherapy" (short-term change) primarily based upon the symptom-context method developed by the PI. In both projects the long-term goal is the same--to understand the factors influencing personality change. For both projects I am now at the point where the basic foundations and directions have been established by my previous work, and the work is ready to be carried to its logical conclusions. For Project A, two main directions will be explored: (a) the pretreatment characteristics of patient, especially psychological health-sickness; (b) the conditions for the formation of helping alliances where we have developed new measures and shown promising results. For Project B, my aim now is to expand the research beyond the few cases which have been done so far to a large sample for each type of patient. We have already begun in this direction and have shown that some of the main concepts having to do with necessary short-term preconditions for symptoms are useful also in understanding the curative factors in psychotherapy outcome.